Without efficient homes and buildings, grid hardening cannot carry us through extreme events.
Energy efficiency is often called the first fuel because it’s the fuel you don’t use, it’s abundantly available, and it keeps on giving day and night. In most cases energy efficiency is the lowest cost option so we must continue, and increase funding for weatherization, home improvements, and energy efficient appliance upgrades.
Energy efficient buildings can coast longer from one heating or cooling cycle to the next.
Today all of the technological and digital advances for our vast electric grid infrastructure seek to provide situational awareness and rapid reconnection when circuits break, which is the original premise of the ‘smart grid’ a decade ago. The objective was keeping the grid operating (reliability) under normal circumstances, but not on resilience (durability). When we talk about reliability it is often conflated with durability, so it’s understandable to turn the lens on the grid’s generation and transmission assets. That feeds the old paradigm of generation capacity following demand loads, yet that operational paradigm has changed along two parallel paths - one being renewable energy and its inherent variable generation times, and the other being extreme events such as weather or disaster and their long duration spikes in load from heating and cooling. Energy efficient buildings can coast longer from one heating or cooling cycle to the next.
Energy efficiency is equitable, and can be implemented this year if funded appropriately.
Extreme weather events, fires and floods, and the rolling brown outs they bring, leave people without adequate power while sheltering at home through the storm, or worse sheltering at a community center. Keeping the power demand low, staggered yet stable, is essential to mitigate the risk of a complete blackout that could take days to restart. Hardening energy generation assets is of course necessary, but that also assumes energy is delivered to every connection point, and that’s not a reasonable scenario during extreme events. Distributed generation is one very good answer but that’s not immediate nor equitable. Energy efficiency is equitable, and can be implemented this year if funded appropriately.
Considering renewable energy and its intermittent generation, utilities and innovators are implementing novel approaches to shape demand curves to match generation cycles. This ‘load shaping’ approach, modulating when appliances use power, is no doubt an essential long term solution for a grid based on renewable energy. Load shaping however does not address extreme events (heat waves, cold snaps, fires and floods). In a future state when there is a critical mass of direct control appliances in homes and buildings, load shaping can be employed to aid rolling brown-outs, and the grid will evolve into this future vision over time. For now though, load shaping relies on occupant ‘behavior’ and influencing people to opt-in to utility control of appliances or into time of use rates. In the case of extreme events, utility customers won’t be turning much off, rather the opposite. Once again it’s energy efficiency that reduces the overall load allowing for longer coasting of heating or cooling during times of power constraints.
Energy efficiency is cost effective, and provides for resilience.
Distributed energy is no doubt the answer to resilience during times of extreme events. And electric utilities should absolutely be the conveyor of those options given they are the monopoly energy provider. As new loads of electric vehicles or load reduction of rooftop solar and storage are deployed at scale, the complexity of matching power generation and electric demand remains a big challenge. Those new appliances and control systems are expensive, not cost effective energy reduction measures, and not an equitable approach to resilience. Energy efficiency is cost effective, and provides for resilience.
Energy efficiency is a resilient grid asset and the proverbial port in a storm.
In normal times, the electric grid has much to gain from advancements in renewables, distributed energy resources, load management, microgrids and load shaping. When disaster strikes however, energy efficiency buildings are the first line of defense for a grid in crisis. These buildings are a resource that continues to operate predictably at a time when other resources may be failing. Energy efficiency is a resilient grid asset and the proverbial port in a storm.
About Chuck Ray
Chuck Ray is a business development consultant in the electricity space with background in energy policy, program design and implementation, demand side management and customer engagement. With a life long dedication to reducing energy intensity he has a multidisciplinary background, prefers to work within the interface of buyers and sellers, and currently spends the majority of his time addressing market barriers in transportation electrification and urban mobility at the Rocky Mountain Institute. You can follow occasional posts on LinkedIn.